James Thomas Law


James Thomas Law was an English cleric, the chancellor of the diocese of Lichfield from 1821.

Life

He was eldest son of George Henry Law, the bishop of Bath and Wells, and Jane, daughter of General James Whorwood Adeane, MP, of Babraham, Cambridgeshire. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduated B.A. in 1812 as second senior optime, and was chosen fellow of the college. He took holy orders in 1814, and proceeded M.A. in 1815.
On 9 April 1818 Law was made prebendary of Chester Cathedral, and on 18 July following prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral. In 1821 he was appointed chancellor of the diocese of Lichfield, in 1824 commissary of the archdeaconry of Richmond, and in 1840 special commissary of the diocese of Bath and Wells.
Law supported the Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery at Queen's College, Birmingham, of which he was elected honorary warden in 1846, and the Lichfield Theological College. He was master of St John's Hospital, Lichfield.
Law was a benefactor to the city of Lichfield. In 1838 he gave the statue of Samuel Johnson in the Market Square. Chancellor Law's Fountain in Beacon Park was unveiled in 1871.
Law died at Lichfield on 22 February 1876. The monument to Law and his wife in the churchyard of St Michael on Greenhill, Lichfield is a listed building; it originally had a clock illuminated by gas.

Works

Law published, with charges and pamphlets:
Law also published Forms of Ecclesiastical Law, London, 1831 ; it was a translation of the first part of Thomas Oughton's Ordo Judiciorum,. There were with it materials from other jurists and authorities: Francis Clerke's Praxis; Henry Conset's Practice of the Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Courts; John Ayliffe's Parergon; William Cockburn's Clerk's Assistant in the Practice of the Ecclesiastical Courts; and Edmund Gibson's Codex juris ecclesiastici Anglicani.

Family

On 16 December 1820 Grey married Lady Henrietta Charlotte Grey, eldest daughter of George Grey, 6th Earl of Stamford. They had four children.